


Still a Member of the Midnight Crew

by SoulOfEmerald



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Cannibalism, Gen, Melancholy, Midnight Crew - Freeform, Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 10:24:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16303391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoulOfEmerald/pseuds/SoulOfEmerald
Summary: A day in the life of Hearts Boxcars during a zombie outbreak, going through the motions of survival with his undead boss.





	Still a Member of the Midnight Crew

Your name is Hearts Boxcars, and his is Spades Slick.  You helped him build this city up from the ever changing sands of the desert that surrounds it.  You’ve stuck by him through trial and threat, along with whatever else you came across. You’re certainly not going to leave his side anytime soon; he is your boss, at the least.

You’re both traversing the streets, which have been littered with blood and rot, most of it literal.  Few wander in the glaring desert heat save for you two, with them preferring to stay in the dark until the two moons shine their cool light, signaling the prime hours of city life.  You stay out of the way of the ones that do show up. You’d rather not deal with them at the moment. They wander aimlessly, unthinking, hungerly. Just how you’d expect the undead to act, all in all.

“You got any idea of where we’re goin’?” you ask Slick.

He snarls and hisses at you.

“‘Anywhere you damn feel like’ it is.”

He continues to shuffle along ahead of you.  He hates it when you try to go in front of him, so you let him lead the way, even when there’s no end destination in sight.  You know he doesn’t know where he’s going. He’ll figure it out when he gets there, and wherever “there” is, you’re going to like it.

Fin doesn’t bother hiding his sluggish footsteps in the alley you’re passing.  You come to a stop, which forces slick to as well. He turns to you and growls.  You don’t say anything as you mix a few chemicals Deuce had given you into an old bottle you found lying discarded a few feet away.  You don’t let yourself wonder where Deuce may be.

Fin limped closer; the broken leg you’d given him days before would never heal.  The bold emerald tint of his flesh had long since faded to a faint memory, as if he were a piece of dyed paper left out in the sun all day.  It hung from his bones, it and his once perfectly-tailored suit left in tatters around the various injuries he’d sustained over time. He mimed a biting motion, his jaws partly lined with sharkly fangs, with occasional holes where a few had fallen out.

You halfheartedly lob the bottle of chemicals at him.  A cloud of smoke makes no hesitation in filling up the space between you and the husk of a leprechaun.  He screeches, unable to learn that he could simply make his way out of the smoke, even though you can’t count how many times you’ve put him in the same situation.  As per usual, you whip up a second one and toss it behind you. Your ever shrinking store of said chemicals doesn’t escape you. You know you’ll need to figure out what they are soon, however complex that task will be.  That was part of Deuce’s strong suit, not yours. Moreso explosives, but he dabbled in chemicals on occasion as well.

You turn back to Slick, who’s staring at you impatiently.  His shell, once holding a healthy shine, now had the dull of death, save for a spot on the arm where it had been decimated by a lucky foe.  He tugs on the makeshift leash you managed to fashion out of two belts and a long metal pipe, which you honestly didn’t expect to last as long as it has.  You don’t know why he doesn’t fight against it more often. You chalk it up as some deep ingrained concept that you’re to follow him, and therefore it’s his job to lead you.  You don’t know the logistics of it, of course. You were never the brains of the crew: that was Droog’s role. Your role was to be the muscle, and that didn’t normally involve chemicals or the logistics of the undead mind.

You comply to his demands, moving forward with him as you picture Trace growling, utterly confused as he finds himself faced with a wall of clouds instead of your past trail.  Those two were considerably more of a threat when they were alive, you’ve long since decided. Slick growls in a way that you’re certain acts as a stand in for “it’s about damn time”.  You mutter a quick “sorry, boss” in reply.

 

* * *

 

The sun is going to set soon, you notice.  Slick has led you to the halfway point of the city: not the heart, and not the outskirts, but the unnamed part in the middle.  A few more of the shambling bodies of the unlucky population start to find their ways into the streets, and you find yourself having to slow your pace a bit to avoid looking too alive.

A couple of blocks ahead of you, a shotgun goes off.  No other shots follow. Likely someone who had been infected, you decide.  You don't think anything of it, but slick wants to investigate. He struggles and pulls against the leash, snarling and gnashing his teeth at the general air in front of him as if the action alone could free him from his bonds.  You wouldn’t be able to convince him to do otherwise even in the best of the olden days, so you begrudgingly follow along. He’ll go where he wants till he runs out of steam, and then you suppose you’ll find someplace to stay for the night.

It takes you awhile to get there, and by the time you do you find a small crowd formed outside, scrabbling over each other in an attempt to get through the likely blocked door.  They don’t seem to pay you much attention, despite the ruckus your boss is making. You’ve found yourself in places like this before, so you choose the plan of action that would get this over with easier and slip into a side alley to wait it out.  It was always easier than trying to brute force your way through, though long-past experiences were begging to differ. Every time you try it as of late, you find yourself dealing with a much larger ordeal than you anticipated as the sound made drew in more and more of the fallen, each instance of this proving more risk than actual value.  So, despite this gnawing voice in your head telling you to do what you do best, you wait in that side alley.

Slick complains the whole time, as per usual.  Each minute that passes feels much longer as you deal with him, constantly muttering to him at a volume only the two of you could hear that he’ll be able to do whatever he wants if he would be patient for just a while longer.  Finally, about an hour after you first hid (an estimated window of time, as Slick would never approve of you owning a clock while he was around), things finally calmed down enough for you to poke around.

It was an old, floor-level apartment at one point in time.  You don’t remember when this one was made. The windows are boarded, and peering through them shows that the door is in fact blocked by large pieces of faded wooden furniture.  You test a few of the boards over each window individually. A few from the window to the left come off in your hand, so you decide to remove the rest. It was a surprisingly quiet ordeal, all in all, as you catch and hold onto each board you remove and place them carefully along the building’s exterior.

You guide Slick in first.  He’s unhindered by the broken remains of whatever window had once blocked the room from the outside world, each invasive shard being insignificant when compared to his overarching goal.  You follow along as far behind him as the leash will allow, knocking loose a few edges of glass as well. The interior is nothing special. An old kitchen, recently used based on the disturbance of the dust in certain places.  Bottles are scattered around the room, the contents of which you wouldn’t know. Light pours in from between the boards of the other windows, and you make short work of blocking the one you came in from.

The rest of the building appears the same, in terms of usage.  When you get to the bedroom, you find the body. A skinny yet tall Prospitian male, with a look of permanent mild disturbance on his face, even in death.  Resting by the Prospitian’s hands was a shotgun. A string leading from the doorknob was attached to the trigger of the shotgun, which is facing the wrong direction from the door and straight at the body.  Resting between the man’s eyes is a bullet hole, still dribbling a bead of red if given a few minutes.

You fend Slick away as you inspect the body for any bite marks, much to your boss’s rage.  He tries to lunge for you, which proves futile as you easily keep his small form in place. After you’ve searched the body as much as you’ve deemed necessary, you tear an arm out of its socket and throw it to him.  He redirects his lunges to pounce on the arm, shattering the shell with his jaws and sinking his teeth into what little warmth the body still held. With Slick satisfied, you take the other arm for yourself.

As you do so, you find yourself looking at a wallet you managed to displace as you searched.  It was devoid of money for the most part, as if that meant anything anymore. Unfolded and peeking out the bottom was a set of two photographs.  One seemed to be of the Prospitian standing amongst two shorter Prospitians, and the second showing him with a dame that might as well have been him if they had been the same sex.  You fling the rest away, not wanting to learn any more about the man you and your boss’s newfound dinner had been. It was never a good idea to grow attached to one’s food.

You sit yourself down next to the body, uncaring of getting more blood on your suit and focusing on keeping your boss from contaminating the rest of the body.  You’re both done with your arms and have moved on to gnawing through a leg each before you let yourself break the comfortable silence. Softly, you let yourself sing dusty words from ages ago, locked into your memory by decades of singing in bar and secret base alike.

“I hate a moral coward, one who lacks a manly spark.”

You take a bite of your food, chew, and swallow.

“I just detest a man afraid to go home in the dark.”

Another bite.

“I always spend my evenings where there’s women, wine, and song.”

Slick, likely powered nothing more than by muscle memory, muttered groans that sounded almost like attempts at syllables to the general rhythm of the tune.

“And like a man I always bring my little wife along.”

And so, you and Slick make your way through the song, and you can almost hear the smooth and chirpy voices of Droog and Deuce respectively as you do so.  “I’m a Member of the Midnight Crew”, you all called it. You find truth in that lyric every time you sing it. You still help run this town. You’re still loyal to the man you work for.  You would accept your crewmates if you ever found them again. You still enjoy a good romance novel every now and then when you find the time.

Despite everything, you are still Hearts Boxcars, and you’re still a member of the Midnight Crew.


End file.
